Archive for January, 2015

It would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, but a party of the radical left is on the cusp of power in an EU country. The latest opinion polls indicate that Syriza will triumph in the Greek national elections to be held on Sunday and although it may not win an absolute majority in parliament it would (assuming it can find coalition partners) certainly be the dominant force in any coalition government that emerged.

Unsurprisingly the imminent prospect of a left government committed to breaking with the brutal reign of austerity has alarmed the powerful within and beyond Greece. In a thinly veiled attack on Syriza, for example, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, recently warned Greeks about electing ‘extreme forces’ into power and suggested, rather in the manner of a threat, that they ought to consider ‘what a wrong election result would mean for Greece and the eurozone’.

But what’s remarkable about this is that, for all the warnings of ‘extremism’, Syriza’s demands are in fact rather modest and indeed eminently sensible. At the core of its programme are pledges to negotiate the cancellation of 50 percent of Greece’s crippling debt, lift austerity and boost growth and employment through public investment. These proposals are accompanied by a range of measures designed to address what Syriza rightly calls the ‘humanitarian crisis’ in Greece such as promises to provide free electricity and subsidised meals and housing for the poor.

Given the economic and social catastrophe that austerity has visited on Greece—over 25 percent unemployment, an economy that has contracted by a quarter, wages and pensions slashed, soaring rates of homelessness, suicide and infant mortality—these are hardly outlandish or utopian proposals. They pivot on the simple, obvious truths that the national debt is unpayable, that austerity is generating nothing but misery and, further, on the rather basic ethical demand that every citizen should have enough to eat, decent housing and access to the basic resources that will allow them to live with dignity. There is nothing extreme about this—indeed, surely the real extremists are those who insist on further austerity, further hardship and humiliation for ordinary Greeks.

It is precisely the moderation of Syriza’s stance, however, that has attracted fierce criticism from other left wing groups. The Greek Communist Party (KKE) for example denounces Syriza for ‘opportunism’ while the Front of the Greek Anticapitalist Left(Antarsya), though much less sectarian than the KKE, refuses to combine forces with Syriza, arguing that the latter’s programme is insufficiently radical. Internationally too, there’s no shortage of left critics issuing dire warnings in relation to Syriza’s ‘reformism’, convinced that all it aspires to do is to manage, rather than seriously challenge, the system. Even among many of its supporters there is a general consensus that Syriza ‘is not as radical as we would want’ and that backing it in the forthcoming election represents a necessary reining in of the left’s political ambitions under current conditions.

These criticisms are mistaken, however, for three closely related reasons.

Firstly, it is not at all clear what serious alternative most of these critics propose. In fact, for many of them the underlying dispute with Syriza is not so much over the details of reform proposals as it is with the party’s very intention to form a government within the political institutions of the capitalist state. Such a strategy, they warn, leads inexorably to betrayal since any party that seeks to utilise capitalist institutions will become trapped within the logic of the system. But years of intense social struggles in Greece—including mass demonstrations, occupations of government buildings and more than 30 general strikes—have failed to stop austerity, much less usher in socialist transformation. It is clear that social mobilisation in itself is not enough and that the question of political power must be confronted. Greek workers require a political instrument to lead in actually implementing their demands.

In this regard many of Syriza’s Marxist critics invoke the need for soviet organs of workers’ power. The obvious problem here, however, is that in circumstances where such organs show little sign of emerging even after years of intense social struggle such invocation remains entirely abstract—it is, for the time being at least, wishful thinking rather than the identification of a serious, concrete alternative in the here and now. Indeed, typically, such critics cannot specify in anything but the most hand-waving and vague terms how such organs of workers’ power might possibly emerge. Syriza, however, grasps that the struggle as it currently is requires a government of the left that utilises existing political institutions and, for all the undoubted risks, problems and dilemmas that this will bring, are prepared to take on this responsibility. As such, only Syriza proposes a serious and concrete plan to confront the urgency of the situation in Greece. In comparison, many of its leftwing critics seem to me to offer little but evasive posturing which of course offers little of practical value to people currently struggling to feed their families and pay their rent—this, indeed, is one reason why the KKE and Antarsya will struggle to win more than derisory shares of the vote in the forthcoming election.

Secondly, Syriza’s proposed reforms correspond to the immediate needs and demands of ordinary Greeks—for jobs, better wages, affordable food and housing and so on. Indeed it’s precisely because of this correspondence that Syriza’s programme has resonated so successfully with Greek voters, bringing the party to the brink of office and thus putting imminent, real change on the agenda in a way that ostensibly ‘radical’ but wholly abstract revolutionary demands with little political traction never could.

Thirdly, it’s clear that, for all its sober pragmatism, Syriza’s manifesto is likely to bring it into direct confrontation with the forces of domestic and international capital. It’s certainly not a programme for the management of capitalism on capital’s terms. A Syriza government is likely to face intense hostility in the form, for example, of serious capital flight, bank runs, an ‘investment strike’ and threats of withdrawal on the part of multinationals together with various methods of blackmail and obstruction on the part of the EU. It will also face a dangerous struggle within the Greek state itself—not least in relation to an unreliable and hostile police force in which more than half of all officers voted for the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn in the 2012 national elections.

It’s likely, then, that on taking office Syriza will, very quickly, be faced with a stark choice: either to renege on its commitments in the face of powerful opposition or to press ahead, which will mean being prepared to take counter-measures to defend its initial reforms: cancellation of the debt, nationalising banks, expropriating closed factories. Of course there’s nothing inevitable about which of these two options Syriza will choose, but given the popular hopes generated by its promises, to retreat on its core commitments would certainly be to consign itself to future electoral oblivion. Much here would depend on mobilised mass support seeking to push the government on and to force it to stick to its promises—indeed a Syriza victory on Sunday will probably unleash a new wave of popular struggles.

The key point here is that determined, consistent implementation and defence of Syriza’s pragmatic election promises is likely to lead to measures that go far beyond the party’s current objectives. We could say that Syriza’s apparently modest programme conceals an inner dynamic of radicalisation.

The very possibility of this dynamic however is rooted in the moderation of the initial demands—in the way in which these articulate the everyday concerns of the mass of the Greek population. What anti-capitalist forces operating within Syriza grasp is that revolutionary social change must emerge from ordinary people’s collective experience of the way in which modest, common sense measures to improve their lives and defend their dignity run up against the limits of what the current order will allow. This experience thus reveals the system’s essential inhumanity—in a sense we might say its extremism—and demonstrates concretely, in a way that abstract declarations of ‘the need for socialism’ simply do not, the imperative to push beyond capitalist limits in order to secure the very basic conditions for a decent and humane society.

Ed Rooksbyteaches politics at Ruskin College in Oxford and is a member of Left Unity.

This article – ‘The End of TINA‘ – by Peter Bratsis in Jacobin is well worth reading. It provides strong reasons to support Syriza and a pretty powerful critique of Syriza’s (ultra) left critics. Neverthless, I don’t (or don’t think I) agree with the underpinning idea that Syriza ‘is not as radical as we would want’ and that supporting it is a necessary sort of trimming of our political sails under current conditions.

In his fantastic book, Socialist Reasoning, the late Andrew Collier argues (drawing on the radically anti-utopian elements of Marx’s thought) that the purpose of socialists should not be conceived as the ‘establishment of socialism’ – that is a utopian mode of thinking that focuses on the inadequacy of existing society when measured against a transcendent and external standard. Rather the purpose should be to implement practical measures designed to improve conditions, concretely in the here and now, for the oppressed. Thus the primary focus of a “workers’ government” should be on the provision of jobs, decent housing and so on not the ‘realisation of socialism’ or the establishment of ‘another world’. In this sense Eduard Bernstein was right that ‘the goal is nothing [and it is literally nothing – a vision is nothing], the movement is everything’ – it is just that (what Bernstein didn’t see) any major and determined attempt to achieve these short-term improvements will tend to run up against the logic of capitalism and must push beyond it.

For me it’s precisely the ‘modesty’ of Syriza’s demands – the fact that they correspond to immediate needs of Greeks (an end to austerity, provision of free electricity, subsidised food and rents) – that makes Syriza’s programme radical in a real sense. I’ve no time for (abstract, hand-waving, never spelt out) demands (on whom?) for SOCIALISM NOW! It’s clear that the determined and consistent implementation of these ‘common sense’ policies (which are eminently sensible, modest demands for basic human dignity) will bring the reform process into progressively sharper conflict with the economic order in a way that the most abstractly ‘radical’ of programmes never could – because these latter programmes are mostly hot air – castles in the sky – with no significant political purchase.

This is an unfinished draft of a rejoinder to Paul Blackledge’s reply to my article in ISJ. I tried to write this over Easter last year and was unable to finish it off satisfactorily – I wanted, in particular, to address some of the arguments raised in Harman and Potter’s 1977 essay on “the Workers’ Government” to which Paul appeals in his reply. I planned, in particular, to criticise the strikingly instrumentalist conception of the state that Harman and Potter seem to work with and also to argue that to the extent that the strategy of ‘left opposition’ to a ‘left government’ Paul draws from this essay represents any sort of concrete elaboration of a revolutionary strategy it relies on the capacity and willingness of other socialists actually to take office so that the business of opposing them from the left can begin. There’s an odd sort of refusal or disavowal of responsibility here – which is also present I think in the SWP and Antarsya approach toward the imminent possibility of a Syriza government in Greece.

I found, however, that I was unable to complete this final part of the essay and, indeed in conjunction probably with other anxieties which hit me at the time, ran into severe problems of writer’s block. In fact, I’ve found it extremely hard to write anything – certainly nothing for publication – since. It’s partly in order to help me finally overcome this block that I’ve decided to publish this on my blog. I’m not going to finish it now, but I felt that tidying up the draft I’d written in March/April last year so that I could publish it on this site would be a step in the right direction.

One of the things which possibly contributed to my writing paralysis was that I was never quite sure if the tone of the piece was right. I should point out that Paul is a good friend of mine who has actually gone out of his way to help me with academic advice, assistance and so on several times and that if the rejoinder comes over, at times, as aggressive, emotionally piqued or finger jabbing this was not my intention.

A Rejoinder to Paul Blackledge on “Left Reformism”

Ed Rooksby

I thank Paul Blackledge for his response[1] to my criticisms[2] of the Socialist Workers’ Party’s perspective on “left reformism”[3] and for the comradely tone in which his reply is written. I’d like to take the opportunity to explain, here, why I don’t find Paul’s reply persuasive and to respond to some of the points that he makes about my argument.

One of the main points that I made in my previous article was that “left reformism” is used as such a broad catch-all term for, essentially, everyone and everything on the left that the SWP regards as to its own right politically except mainstream social democrats, that its analytical usefulness is highly limited. Moreover, this process of lumping together myriad diverse groups and perspectives allows for a line of argumentation in which critical focus on a “moderate” strand of “left reformism” – left social democracy – is passed off as an analysis of all strands of it, since they are all merely instances of the same thing. I argued that this approach obscured real differences between left social democrats on the one hand, and those on the left of “left reformist” organisations who want to implement transitional reforms to trigger the overthrow of capitalism. Now while Paul does make a nod or two to the “concrete differences” between perspectives he insists on corralling together under the rubric of “left reformism” his argument in his most recent piece, otherwise, remains unchanged. He simply reaffirms, that is, his earlier suggestion that there are no relevant differences of any significance between those slightly to the left of social democracy and those with a revolutionary perspective who can see a (limited) role in this process for a left government. All fail to extricate themselves from the core limitation of social democracy which, as Paul explains in detail in his previous article, is that this tradition assumes that the state is class neutral. So while I pointed out that, actually, there are strands of thought within what Paul calls “left reformism” that do, in fact, rest on an understanding of the capitalist state as, precisely, a capitalist state (and that there are people within this camp who actually agree with Paul that the capitalist nature of the capitalist state is determined in large part by the structural interdependence between state and capital) Paul’s response, essentially, is to ignore this and simply to reassert his claim that “left reformists” by definition operate on the basis of a more or less social democratic understanding of state power.

The disagreement between Paul and me, however, isn’t about whether or not there are serious constraints on state autonomy emanating from the structurally embedded power of capital. It’s a dispute about the limits of this autonomy – the extent to which it might provide a certain space for manoeuvre on the part of a left government. To the extent that Paul appears to concede that I may have grasped some inkling of the structural constraints on state power his response is merely that my analysis “profoundly underestimates the barriers to socialist advance through the existing state”.[4] That’s it – an assertion that I am wrong.

Paul criticises me for recounting what he leaves out of his gloss on Fred Block’s approach to the state[5] – which is that working class struggle can force state managers to introduce reforms which run counter to the interests of capital at least in the short term. This, Paul says, is “beside the point” since he (Paul) has been clear that “significant reforms” are possible. It quite obviously isn’t beside the point in this debate, however, to be clear about how Block’s account of the structural interdependence between state and capital (upon which Paul draws) allows for the possibility of the implementation not just of “significant reforms” but of definitely anti-capitalist reforms. Further, the point I make in connection with this – which Paul dismisses – that a left government made up of those with a transitional perspective would be much more likely than a pro-capitalist government to respond positively to demands for radical reforms which push against capitalist interests, follows on absolutely logically from what Block argues. In other words, I think it is pretty plain that Block’s schema is much more compatible with my defence of a left government strategy than it is with Paul’s insistence that the structural constraints on state activity mean that such a strategy is “utopian”.

What Paul needs to show in order to demonstrate his claim that the degree of state autonomy within the constraints of its structural interdependency with capital is not so expansive as to allow for the sort of approach I advocate is why if as he seems to accept state managers can, under pressure from a mass movement, implement reforms which disrupt the smooth functioning of capitalism and strengthen the working class, these reforms must always, necessarily, be limited to reforms within safe limits for the system. What is it, exactly, that prevents the introduction of reforms that break out of the bounds of the merely “significant”? Unfortunately Paul’s analysis does not confront this question.

None of what I have argued is to say that capitalism can be abolished in some unbroken series of cunning transitional reforms. There is no gradualist, reformist road to socialism. The left government strategy of revolutionary reform I draw from Andre Gorz is premised on the idea that revolution can only emerge organically from a process of struggle for reform and that a left government, in dialectical interaction with a mass movement, could be driven on to enact a series of radical anti-capitalist reforms within the constraints on state autonomy presented by the structural interdependence between state and capital – reforms which empower the mass movement and which help to create the conditions in which a revolutionary rupture really comes onto the immediate political agenda. I thought I was pretty clear about this in my article and I think Gorz is pretty clear about it too in the writings from which I draw this approach. Nevertheless Paul manages to find a way of presenting the Gorz of Socialism and Revolution – beneath all his theoretical and rhetorical sophisms presumably (this is what Paul implies his 1970s and 80s followers “who were looking to give some leftist theoretical weight to what was in effect their reformist practice”[6] found of value in his work) – as the purveyor of a classically reformist idea. That is, according to Paul, Gorz promoted the view that the state could implement a series of “irreversible” reforms. Gorz, then seems to become the champion of a sort of updated Fabian inevitability of gradualism with added rhetorical bells and whistles in which socialism is approached in a relentless, irresistible, forward march. But this just isn’t my reading of Gorz at all. In fact Gorz is perfectly clear in the work from which I draw that there is no such thing as an irreversible reform. He writes, for example:

There are no anti-capitalist institutions or gains which, in the long term, are not nibbled away, distorted, reabsorbed into the system, completely or partially emptied of their substance, if the imbalance which they originally created is not promptly exploited by further advances.[7]

Thus he is clear that:

a socialist strategy of reforms must aim at disrupting the system and taking advantage of its disruption to embark on the revolutionary process of transition to socialism, which… can only be carried out by striking while the iron is hot. This kind of strategy can be effective only in periods of flux and open conflict and far-reaching social and political upheaval.[8]

Paul’s odd reading of Gorz, however, doesn’t stop here. According to Paul he was also it seems, in effect, a proponent of the 1970s social contract. At least this appears to be what Paul is saying when he writes that Gorz’s approach, if it had worked, “would have seen the local variations on the social contract implemented across Europe in the 1970s act as stepping stones to socialism”.[9] Now the above quotation, of course, rather suggests that Gorz’s strategy entails nothing of the kind – he envisages a process of sharpening class conflict and disruption of the system rather than any sort of pact between capital and labour.

While Paul is eager to dismiss the notion of a left government strategy of structural reform as so much “rhetoric”, there is very little, if anything, in his article – or for that matter in any of the various pieces that have emerged from the SWP as part of this debate – in the way of critical reflection in relation to his own tradition. As I pointed out in my first article for this journal I have been clear, from the start, that a left government strategy would involve serious risks and encounter major problems and dilemmas along the way. SWP critics, indeed, have identified many of these inherent risks, problems and dilemmas. I quite openly admit not just that there can, of course, be no guarantee of success, but that the likelihood of success for any given attempt is probably quite low. Further, I am not even certain that a left government strategy could succeed. It is quite beyond me, however, how anyone can be absolutely certain that any given strategy for socialism would or could be successful, though Paul and his co-thinkers often give the impression that, somehow, they are. At least (as again I indicate in my previous article) they never seem to indicate a single difficulty inherent in the Leninist approach they seek to affirm. Paul is, again, completely silent on this matter in his response to me. Surely, however, there must be some risks, gambles and unavoidable dilemmas intrinsic to the SWP’s conception of revolutionary strategy.

It’s worth emphasising how odd this almost total absence of critical reflection in relation to the Leninist dual power strategy looks. As pointed out before, Leninist ideas have never won anything like mass support in an “advanced” capitalist country and Leninist groups today are no less socially and politically marginal than most other radical left formations – yet, typically, this does not seem to have fed through into any sense of humility. It doesn’t seem to stop Paul and others dispensing advice to everyone else with an air of incredible confidence and certainty.

However, it’s not just that Paul and his comrades are completely silent in relation to the potential weaknesses of their own strategic approach, it’s that they never really spell out what it is. The SWP’s conception of the transition to socialism remains remarkably mysterious throughout this debate. Of course we know a little about the dual power strategy they envisage – but not that much. This lends itself to a rather facile style of argument in which a relatively concrete strategy is found wanting in relation to a shadowy superior alternative. But, of course, given that this alternative is never filled-out with much substance, this apparent superiority is never satisfactorily demonstrated – it’s simply assumed. Further, you can’t help suspecting that this assumption of superiority is dependent on the very vagueness of the proposals – if Paul was to fill out his strategy as concretely as the one he criticises he might well find that his favoured approach is likely to run into similar difficulties or problems of comparable weight.

As I pointed out in my previous article one of the weaknesses of the Leninist strategy – and this is where its vagueness is most apparent – is that it seems incapable of providing any concrete account of how a revolutionary situation emerges from day to day working struggles in the here and now. It is true that Paul makes a few hand-waving comments here and there such as his remark that “the experience of collective struggles for reforms creates a space within which participants can begin to recognise their own power to fight for more radical, indeed revolutionary change”[10] – but this amounts to little more than a leftist truism. I would be extremely surprised if any of the “left reformists” Paul thinks he is taking on here disagreed with it in the slightest. The point of difference with Paul is that “left reformists”, on the whole, are willing and able to offer a relatively clear account of how this process might unfold. Paul, by contrast, does not provide the slightest indication of how a situation of dual power comes about. Indeed, it is worth pointing out, in this regard, that three years of struggle in Greece involving numerous mass general strikes has not thrown up soviet organs – let alone a situation of dual power. What it has thrown up is a situation in which a “left reformist” party is on the verge of forming a left government. Sadly Paul and his comrades are unable to grasp the possibilities inherent in the struggles in Greece as they are concretely unfolding and prefer to hold out for some mysterious deus-ex-machina in which soviet power suddenly springs from nowhere.

To the extent that the SWP has attempted to provide its conception of strategy with some degree of concrete elaboration it has tended, as I pointed out in my previous piece, to draw on the idea of transitional demands. But as I also pointed out this raises an important question of agency. We know that a mass movement makes these demands – but upon whom are these demands to be made? The whole transitional demands approach seems, tacitly, to rely on the coming to power of a left government. Paul’s response that my “argument confuses an approach which involves making demands on the state with one that reduces socialism to a statist political project” doesn’t address my point. Quite aside from the fact that it is not entirely clear why the implementation of transitional demands by a left government should imply a more “statist” approach than the implementation of those same demands by a pro-capitalist government, Paul’s response simply evades the key issue – why on earth should we expect a pro-capitalist government to implement a programme of radical reforms that seriously undermine the interests of capital? Wouldn’t a left government – under pressure from a mass movement, driving it on – be much, much more likely to engage in such a process? Paul appears to be in the odd position of arguing that while a pro-capitalist government can be pressured to enact far-reaching reforms that galvanise a revolutionary challenge to capitalism, a left government can offer nothing but obstruction and betrayal.